Imagine Your Chinatown At Country Size

Most every metropolitan area has a "Chinatown". My own experience has been eating novel sometimes excellent food set in a filthy part of town. But to be accurate, Chinatown came before the filth.

And so it is with the curtain being drawn back on the filth of China which is host of the Beijing Olympics. Cars and factories had to be largely locked down to interrupt the smog-producing emissions that would literally cloud the observance of the competitions. Algae plumes on the sea had to be cleaned up by tens of thousands Chinese so boats would not be seized by the green organic product of sewage and agricultural waste. But not for long. After the last tourists hurry home the generation of pollution will begin again. This is all happening against a recent backdrop of earthqukes and flooding that have been exacerbated by shoddy buildings and tree-denuded mountains and the environmental sin of the ages called Three Gorges Dam.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese and not much else in China-one of the worlds oldest civilization. Trees, animals, fish, insects and plants are either gone or are teetering on leaving the smell and filth of the Chinese hoards. Where did all the flora and fauna go ? The Chinese ate 'em! A recent article on the menus of street vendors include: grasshoppers, sea horses, scorpions, lamb testicles, assorted roasted insects ad nauseam. Why even their show piece signature structure the "Birds Nest" reminds that the Chinese rob swallows of their nests and after minimum prepartion eat a soup with ingredients that include the droppings/leavings of the humble bird.

China is the worlds future if we populate the remaining areas of the earth with China-like densities. Frankly we need a virus . We need to have less Chinese in particular and people in general.

Flooding Follows The Human

The old world in the east has lost most of its trees . By comparison the new world in the west still has a plentiful amount. The reason for the difference, according to anthropoligists, is that man settled in the east before migrating to the west. And so the trees were cut and the rivers were channelled and diverted. The recent flooding in China, Burma, India and Southeast Asia are the results of denuded land and the flood plains of rivers being inhabited with surplus people.

Our own Midwest is now experincing the same dynamic. The ongoing channelling of the Mississippi River , draining of wetlands , clearing of the Great Plains of natural grasses for crops and housing developments in flood plains have all contrbuted to the "500 year floods". The scourge of surplus humanity leaves its footprint in ever closer and closer high water marks.

Too, too many people.